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It took him less than an hour to drive out to Pacoima Ranch. Although the
false dawn was already lightening the eastern sky behind the San Gabriel
mountains, the highway was deserted, and the only signs of human life he saw
were at San Fernando Airport, where an executive plane was plaintively winking
its lights on the runway. He drove past Pacoima Reservoir and then out onto
the Little Tujunga Road.
Pacoima Ranch was a ramshackle collection of huts at the end of a twisting,
dusty driveway, with corrugated iron rooftops and sagging verandas. The kind
of place where unspeakable helter-skelter rituals might have been performed,
or where Nancy Drew might have gone in search of ghosts or kidnapers or
fugitives from justice.
Gerard turned the car around in front of the main ranch house, and killed the
engine. Even before he had fished out his suitcase, two Japanese appeared on
the veranda, one of them carrying a Uzi machine gun, both of them masked in
black. They watched him, motionless, as he slammed the lid of his trunk and
walked toward them. Four or five yards away, he paused. "Good morning." He
smiled at them. The two Japanese didn't answer, but moved aside to let Gerard
cross the veranda and enter the ranch house through the screen door. Gerard
asked. "Did the commander get here yet?" and one of the Japanese nodded each
pointed upstairs. "Ah," said Gerard. "Sleeping it off, no doubt."
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Inside, the ranch house was empty of furniture except for three or four neatly
tied-up futons in the large living room, but it was scrupulously clean. On the
walls were rice-paper scrolls and symbols, and a collection of black silk
flags. Gerard had once asked Doctor Gempaku what the flags signified, but
Doctor Gcmpaku had simply told him, "It would take only a minute for me to
explain, but twenty years for you to understand."
Gerard left his suitcase in the bare living room, and then walked through to
the kitchen. There, sitting on a zabuton, a large flat cushion, was Doctor
Gempaku himself, eating his breakfast. In the far corner, over the
old-fashioned black-iron range, another of the masked Japanese was stirring
vegetables in a donabe. It was only just past five o'clock in the morning, but
Doctor Gempaku always rose early to say his prayers.
' 'Would you care to eat?" he asked Gerard as Gerard sat down next to him on
another zabuton. Doctor Gempaku was tall and lean for a Japanese, with a
closeshaven head and small, oval-framed spectacles. There was always a certain
grace and mystery about him, as if he were living partly in California and
partly in some tranquil Japanese garden, a garden of chrysanthemums and golden
carp and esoteric riddles.
Gerard peered into Doctor Gempaku's blue-lacquered bowl. "What's on the menu?"
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
he asked.
"Kitsune udon," smiled Doctor Gempaku. "In English, that means 'fox noodles.'
It is a particularly compelling mystery why a dish of bean curd and noodles
should have become historically associated with the fox, which is one of the
most evil of Japanese spirits. Some say that the fox was always fond of bean
curd. Others say that kitsune udon is the last meal you are given before you
are sent to everlasting hellfire."
"Do you have any cornflakes?" asked Gerard.
Doctor Gempaku spoke quickly in Japanese, and the black-masked boy came over
and set a bowl for Gerard, as well as a paper packet of chopsticks and one of
the white
Tengu
179
china spoons usually used for eating soup.
Before the noodles were served, Gerard observed the small ritual of oshibori,
wiping his hands with a hot, lightly scented towel. Even at Pacoima Ranch,
Doctor Gempaku insisted on the civilized niceties. The black-masked boy filled
Gerard's bowl with kitsune oJon, bowed, and returned to his cooking.
Gerard ate in silence for a while, and then asked, without looking at Doctor
Gempaku, "Esmeralda's told you what we're supposed to be doing next?"
"Yes."
"What do you think?"
"I think it is possible. I can have the next Tengu ready by tomorrow night."
"I'm not asking you if it's possible. I know it''s possible. What I'm asking
you is, what do you thinkT'
Doctor Gempaku watched Gerard carefully for a moment or two, and then said,
"What do you want me to think?"
"I just want your reaction, that's all."
"My moral reaction? Or my philosophical reaction?"
Gerard chased a piece of bean curd around the inside of his bowl. In the end,
he gave up and set the half-emptied bowl down on the table.
"We're sending a Tengu out to kill a man. I want to know how you respond to
that. Whether you think it's the right thing to do, not just as far as the law
is concerned, but as far as the whole project is concerned."
Doctor Gempaku picked up his chopsticks, tested them with his hands, and then
snapped them in two. "Japanese esthetics," he said, "are preoccupied with the
idea of the perfect moment, the 'accident' that is spontaneous, and yet
carefully controlled so that it takes on an artistic and spiritual
deliciousness beyond any experience that occurs either wholly accidentally or
wholly deliberately. To me, this is one of the satisfactions of the Tengu. We
have created the strongest and fiercest of human beings, a creature that can
terrify and overwhelm anybody and everybody. He obeys our directions, and yet
he is also un-
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Tengu
predictable. We cannot tell what he might take it into his mind to do, what
grisly horrors he might suddenly decide to perpetrate. The death of the girl
Sherry Cantor was a perfect example. To the Western mind it seemed like random
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